Blog Post: A professional presentation...

    Think of an outline or Table of Contents in the front of a book, divided into sections, chapters, and topics. If the publisher was not consistent in the use of font style, bolding, upper or lower case, and indents in that outline, it is unlikely that you, the reader, would want to read any further. Your immediate impression would be that, if the Table of Contents was poorly organized, the book, most likely, would follow suit.

    On the other hand, if the Table of Contents made immediate logical sense, with each level predictable in font style, case, bolding, italics, you would be far more likely to read the Table of Contents, and, if the material interested you, even dip into a chapter or two.

    Although not as obvious as your font size/style, the spacing within your résumé is no less important. Spacing between sections, chapters, and topics (separate items within a category such as jobs within the category EXPERIENCE) need to be consistent If they are not, the hiring manager may look at your résumé, and know “something is not quite right” even though he/she does not have the graphical eye to figure out exactly what the problem is. You don’t want something “not quite right” in your résumé…

    The purpose of the spacing is to create readable “chunks” of information—In the case jobs listed in EXPERIENCE, a “frame” around the idea of a single job. Your title and employment information is your topic sentence beginning the paragraph. Your job description expands on that topic sentence. And your objective, for each job, is to enable the hiring manager to understand your work. Consistency in presentation helps that understanding. Inconsistency gets in the way.